Thank you to all those who became paying subscribers or renewed existing subscriptions during last week's drive. If you meant to do it but just didn't get to it, the How To Help page is still open for business. If you want to help the FutureOfCapitalism community in some other way, here are some options:

This one is from Governor Perry: tort reform. Or, as the governor put it, "Tell the trial lawyers to get outta your state."

Some might object that this would actually cost the jobs of lawyers, paralegals, deposition transcribers, court clerks, and the like. But Mr. Perry argues that it nets out as a positive job creator, and, given the record in Texas, it's hard to disagree.

Earlier:

Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 11: "Allow all 50 states to experiment at the state level with developing a mandatory training component of unemployment compensation."

Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 10: Abolish extended unemployment benefits.

Two points about the stock buyback program that Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway announced this morning:

1. It's tax-efficient for Mr. Buffett and other Berkshire shareholders as compared to some of the possible alternatives. Consider that Berkshire holds about $50 billion in cash. Suppose the company decided to distribute $30 billion of that to shareholders in the form of dividends. The shareholders would have to pay 15% tax on dividends received if they hold the shares in taxable accounts. After paying the tax, the shareholders could then do whatever they want with the money — spend it, invest it in something else, or, if they think that Berkshire Hathaway is attractive at the price, buy more Berkshire Hathaway. By using the cash to buy more Berkshire Hathaway, the company allows shareholders who keep their shares to essentially buy more of the company while skipping the step of paying that 15% tax.

The governor of Wisconsin, Scott Walker, and the governor of Indiana, Mitch Daniels, were both in New York City earlier this week for a Manhattan Institute conference about a "new social contract" with public employees.

Mr. Walker spoke first. He said the changes enacted in Wisconsin that had opponents sitting in and sleeping over in the state capital in protest earlier this year had saved $1.44 billion for state and local governments combined. He said school districts had used the savings to hire more teachers to reduce class sizes and to offer merit pay.

Mr. Walker said voters are looking for "not Republican leadership, not Democrat leadership, they just want leadership."

Mr. Walker contrasted his approach with that of Governor Patrick Quinn, a Democrat, of Wisconsin's neighbor Illinois, who "laid off thousands" of state workers after "massive tax increases."

This one comes from Newt Gingrich, in last night's debate:

I think unemployment compensation should be tied directly to a training program. And if you have to -- if you don't have a job and you need help, then in order for us to give you the help, you should sign up for a business-led training program so that that 99 weeks becomes an investment in human capital, giving us the best-trained workforce in the world so you can get a job.

But I believe it is fundamentally wrong to give people money for 99 weeks for doing nothing. That's why we had welfare reform....

frankly, the easiest thing for Congress to do, if the president sends up a proposed extension, is to allow all 50 states to experiment at the state level with developing a mandatory training component of unemployment compensation, so you'd have 50 parallel experiments, and not pretend that Washington knows best or that Washington can solve the problem by itself. But I believe deeply, people should not get money for doing nothing.

Earlier:

If you are still on the fence about whether to become a paying member or subscriber to FutureOfCapitalism.com, here's a final sweetener: You will get a special, members-only pre-launch preview of the next site in the FutureOfCapitalism family.

Other than that, the selling point that seems to be working best in this quarterly drive for paying members and subscribers is this one: "1. You need to reallocate all the money you saved by canceling your New York Times subscription after Paul Krugman wrote that September 11 "has become an occasion for shame."

Thanks to all those who have responded to our quarterly drive by becoming paying members of the FutureOfCapitalism community.

Each additional debate seems to confirm for me the feeling that while nearly all of these Republicans would be better than President Obama, there isn't a single one of them I can be unreservedly enthusiastic about.

Governor Romney gave a really good answer when asked whether he thinks President Obama is a socialist. He called the president a "big-spending liberal" who wants to make America more like Europe. He said "Europe isn't working in Europe." He said, "I believe in free enterprise and capitalism." He said, "I spent my life in the private sector, not in government," noting that he only served four years as governor and "didn't inhale" (and drawing an implicit distinction between his own service and Governor Perry's decade-long tenure as governor of Texas).

Two quick and excellent examples of the law of unintended consequences, both courtesy of the National Bureau of Economic Research:

1. Laws cracking down on cigarette smoking by banning smoking in bars and restaurants and by increasing taxes on cigarettes have contributed to an increase in obesity. Reports the Atlantic: "Smokers are less likely to be obese. And the declining use of cigarettes across the country -- due to both tightening pocketbooks and new laws (thanks, Mayor Bloomberg) -- accounts for a bigger increase in the obesity rate in the U.S. than any other factor, according to paper authors Charles L. Baum and Shin-Yi Chou, who have both written with some frequency on the economics of obesity."

Answers to some frequently asked questions about the quarterly drive for paid subscriptions and memberships, which has been going on here this week:

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A. If it is, we sent you a renewal notice by email. If you didn't get the email, your subscription still has some time on it. Of course, if you like what's happening here, one way to say so would be to renew early or to purchase a second or third subscription.

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A. We are considering adding something in between those. In the meantime, you can go ahead and renew your $49 subscription every quarter, or buy two or three at a time.

Q. Why do you ask for my email address or mailing address?

This one comes from Peter Schiff: "Abolish extended unemployment benefits." He writes:

unemployment benefits over time become more of a disincentive to employment than anything else (although the disincentive diminishes with the worker's skill level — i.e. high wage workers are unlikely to forego a high wage job opportunity to preserve unemployment benefits). For marginally skilled workers unemployment insurance is a major factor in determining if a job should be taken or not.

...After all, there are costs associated with having a job. Not only does a worker pay payroll and income taxes on any wages he earns, the loss of unemployment benefits itself acts as a tax. Plus workers must pay for such job related expenses as transportation, clothing, restaurant meals, dry cleaning and childcare, and they must forgo other work that they could do in their free time (providing care for loved ones, home improvement, etc.).

USA Today reports on new data out from the Census:

Maryland rose to No. 1 in affluence in 2010 — a $68,854 median household income — up from third in 2000. The state's suburban Washington, D.C. neighbor, Virginia, rose from 12th to 9th in affluence. And Washington, D.C., skyrocketed from 28th to 8th, the biggest jump of all when the District of Columbia is compared with the states.

This isn't because of any great manufacturing boom, but because of the boom in government spending and power resulting from the Obama administration and the George W. Bush national security buildup. In other words, it's not because of an AOL-type technology boom in the Virginia suburbs. It's because of a booming business by lobbyists and government contractors and by service industries like restaurants and real estate agents and car dealers whose customers are relatively highly paid federal employees.

Forbes is out with the latest version of its annual list of the 400 richest Americans and, whatever the gaps or problems with its count, the results are nonetheless illuminating about the social mobility and dynamism of an economy that is as free as America's. From Forbes: "The Forbes 400 gets more meritocratic over time. An all-time high 70% of this year's list are self-made, up from 55% in 1997....The hoodie-clad 27-year-old Zuckerberg is one of 6 club members to get rich from Facebook. Others include newcomers Sean Parker and Jim Breyer, Facebook's venture capitalist, as well as Zuckerberg's former roommate Dustin Moskovitz, whose birthday is eight days after the Facebook chief's, making him America's youngest billionaire. Three other social media mavens made their debuts including LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, Groupon's Eric Lefkofsky and Zynga's Mark Pincus."

"Soros turns up in Obama's LightSquared Imbroglio" is the headline over Timothy Carney's Washington Examiner article moving ahead a story originally developed by my old New York Sun and Forward colleague Eli Lake about how the Obama administration appears to have intervened with elements of the government in favor of a wireless company. The headline I'd have put on it is "Norman Brownstein turns up in Obama's LightSquared Imbroglio." Anyway, it's wonderful to see an example of the administration trying to clear regulatory obstacles for a private enterprise rather than trying to erect new ones; one wishes that this were a matter of general policy rather than what appears to be an unusual case. My favorite sentence in the Carney article is this: "Finally, there's the eye-catching detail that another Obama donor, George Haywood, steered then-Sen. Obama to invest $90,000 in the company (then named SkyTerra) back in 2005."

This idea comes from, of all people, President Clinton: waive environmental-impact review regulations so that states (and I'd add, companies or individuals) who want to build right now can go ahead and do it. As Mr. Clinton put it, "sometimes it takes three years or more for the approval process. We should try to change this: keep the full review process when there are real environmental concerns, but when there aren't, the federal government should be able to give a waiver to the states to speed up start times on construction projects."

Earlier: Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 8: Pass the free trade agreements with Colombia, South Korea, and Panama.

Cost-Free Job-Creating Idea No. 7: Moratorium on significant new regulations until unemployment rate returns to pre-Obama level of 7.7 percent.

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